Car Bomber Kills 8 at Baghdad Market

STEPHEN FARRELL

Friday

Dec 28, 2007 at 12:01 AM

The blast in Baghdad was timed to catch people emerging from prayers on the Muslim holy day.

BAGHDAD — A car bomber killed 8 people and injured 66 in Baghdad on Friday, timing the blast to catch people emerging from prayers on the Muslim holy day and setting off the explosives directly under a mural celebrating doves of peace.

The bomber parked his white sedan at the roadside shortly after noon, but allayed suspicion by dashing to a nearby vegetable stall and asking for five pounds of oranges and five pounds of cucumbers, said a market vendor in Tayaraan Square, before the car exploded. The blast was in a mainly Shiite area, adorned with posters of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his family, but it was also close to an Armenian Christian church.

“This is what the terrorists do, attack the poor people, especially on Friday when many people come to buy their fruit and vegetables,” said a vendor, Falah Hassan Hashem, 26, as broken tables and wheel hubs were cleared from the sidewalk.

The spot was apparently chosen carefully, in one of the few unprotected areas of a square that has been hit by insurgents in the past, including in May, when a car bomb killed 23 people.

Five-foot-high uninterrupted concrete blast walls now seal off most of the popular street market from vehicles, but there is no protection on the short, exposed stretch of highway overpass where the bomb exploded.

As the emergency services went through their familiar drills, sealing off the area and clearing debris, the explosion set off an argument between Baghdadis about the extent of improvements in the security situation.

There has been a decline in bombings in Baghdad in recent months, but the last few weeks have still seen deadly attacks at the nearby Ghazil animal market, and on shops that sell alcohol.

“This wasn’t a surprise, their activities have never stopped,” said Mr. Hashem, the vendor. “I don’t think there has been any progress at all.”

“No, no, there is hope that things might be better,” interjected Saad Aboud, a customer. “Compared to what the terrorists used to do, this is nothing.”

Three hours after the blast, the police lifted roadblocks, and traffic poured back into the street.

In a nearby public park, Iraqis enjoying a day off evinced little concern about the bombing.

Some said that they were letting their children out in public for the first time in months, after being too scared to do so during the two major holidays Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha, and that even though they expected more bombs, the violence had fallen to a level they found tolerable.

“I was just talking to my friend about this subject,” said Thiaa Adel, 40, from the central Baghdad district of Karrada. “It happens. There will be blasts from time to time.

“Probably this part of the city will be targeted too, 100 percent I think so. But I feel my children are living in a small prison, so I had to bring them here. I walk around looking left and right. I think things will get better.”

Also on Friday, Oil Ministry officials in Baghdad said they had threatened to cut crude oil exports to South Korea unless it canceled an oil exploration deal signed with the Kurdistan regional government.

In November, a South Korean consortium including the state-owned Korea National Oil Corporation announced that it had signed an agreement with the semiautonomous Kurdish authorities to explore a field in northeast Iraq over the next three years that has an estimated reserve of 500 million barrels.

The Kurds insist that the deal and other agreements are legal, but the central government in Baghdad has threatened to nullify the contracts, saying that only it can negotiate over Iraq’s oil resources.

On Friday, Salah al-Ameri, the head of Iraq’s state-owned State Oil Marketing Organization, said his agency had warned the Koreans two weeks ago that it would halt exports by the end of this year as punishment.

“We told them that we will stop the exports on Dec. 31. because of the deal signed with the Kurdish regional government,” Mr. Ameri said.

“We have a friendship with them and they have forces in Iraq. We would like to continue economic relations with South Korea, but they have to stop making deals with the Kurdish government and must come and do the deals with the central government.”

Assem Jihad, an Oil Ministry spokesman in Baghdad, warned that there would be “no leniency” shown to any company signing such contracts. “There was a clear warning to these companies that they will be blacklisted and excluded from any future cooperation with the ministry,” he told The Associated Press in Baghdad.

In Seoul, South Korea’s Parliament voted Friday to extend the deployment of the country’s 650 troops in Iraq for another year, amid protests outside the Parliament building.

On Friday in Baghdad, The Associated Press said, the police said they had discovered a large weapons cache beneath a chicken coop at a property owned by the son of Adnan al-Dulaimi, a politician who leads the main Sunni Arab bloc, Tawafiq.

The news agency cited unnamed police officials as saying that they had found 80 mortars, 60 grenade launchers, hand grenades, sniper rifles, ammunition and car bombs. Mr. Dulaimi’s son, Maki, was already being held by the police after a car bomb was found on the street outside his father’s compound a month ago. His arrest prompted a Tawafiq walkout from the Parliament amid claims of victimization.

Mr. Dulaimi confirmed that the police raided a property in front of his house Thursday night, and said he was aware that they claimed to have found explosives.

However, he said that his family did not own the property in question and were not responsible for it, and that someone else was living there.

“This is all fabrication because they want to destroy my reputation,” he said, maintaining that he himself is a target of insurgents. “They killed nine of my guards and have tried to kill me many times because I joined the political process.”

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